The Neon-Lit Dark Age

(Reprinted from the issue of November 6, 2003)

Over the years Ive come to feel
that being conservative in politics is both necessary and futile. Necessary,
because certain things simply must be conserved; but also futile, because
conservatives keep capitulating to their enemies and even
adopting their principles.

Consider the
publisher Conrad Black. Lord Black is known as a
Catholic and a conservative, but he has just written an article saluting
Franklin D. Roosevelt as capitalisms savior. Nothing
really new here; Newt Gingrich and other leading conservatives have
hailed Roosevelt as the greatest American president of the 20th century.
Ronald Reagan used to cite him admiringly.

Me, I go back. I was
for Goldwater in 1965. No, not 1964. I
missed out on that campaign. Ever behind the times, I became a
conservative only when Goldwater had already lost. And if anything united
conservatives in those days, it was their utter loathing of the memory of
FDR.

Why? Well, he had
gutted the U.S. Constitution, turned the
federal government into a welfare state, coddled organized labor, tried to
pack the U.S. Supreme Court, lied the country into a war it didnt
want, formed a foul alliance with Joseph Stalin, allowed Soviet agents to
infiltrate his administration, founded the United Nations, and, not least,
been married to Eleanor Roosevelt. Friend of capitalism? With cynical
demagogy, he had baited businessmen as economic
royalists. The only thing that prevented him from being an outright
Communist was his total lack of principle.

In a practical
negative sense, FDR defined American
conservatism. Reversing his legacy was the dream of every conservative.
Other things might divide us, but that united us.

But reversing the
New Deal was a tall order, when millions of
Americans were on Social Security or looking forward to getting it upon
retirement. And the Democrats pretty much owned the electorate, with
Republicans cowering and compromising just to stay alive politically.

As the
Republicans fortunes began to change during the
Great Society years, conservatives started adapting too. They supported
Richard Nixon in 1968, though Nixon had symbolized the kind of
Republicanism they thought Goldwater had vanquished. After glumly
sticking it out with Gerald Ford, they became enthusiastic about Reagan in
1980, seeing him as a Goldwater who could actually win the presidency;
and they forgave Reagan his many lapses from principle, believing he was
still, at heart, one of us.

Blaming these lapses
on the men around the
president, they cried: Let Reagan be Reagan! (At one
point I gave up and suggested, in a fit of disgust, Let someone else
be Reagan.)

Reagan was too
savvy and self-protective to attack Social
Security, Medicare, or labor unions  much of his support came from
retirees and union workers  so conservatives quietly dropped these
subjects. Afraid of being perceived as bigots, they also
abandoned Goldwaters principled opposition to most federal civil
rights legislation.

Before you knew it,
conservatives were quoting, and celebrating,
not only Roosevelt, but also Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther
King Jr. Forgetting their ancient America First
isolationism, they revered Democratic presidents for their
tough foreign policies. And after all, Truman and Kennedy, unlike
Roosevelt, had been anti-Communists. Conservatives even tried to turn the
tables on liberals by accusing them of isolationism for
opposing military intervention abroad!

As if that
werent enough, conservatives in the Reagan
era formed an alliance with certain disgruntled liberals, courteously
known as neoconservatives, though there was little of the
old conservatism in their outlook. The neocons regarded Roosevelt as a
hero and favored U.S. military intervention.

Here too a few
principles had to be quietly laid to rest. The old
conservatism had opposed foreign aid as unconstitutional, and recalled the
Founding Fathers warnings against entangling
alliances. All that had to go. Conservatism, if you could still call it
that, came into full alignment with neoconservatism. Those few
conservatives who stubbornly maintained the old positions  Russell
Kirk, Patrick Buchanan, Samuel Francis, and others  came under
attack from the neoconservatives, and from the conservatives who courted
them.
Social Issues or Unmentionable Subjects?

Maintaining the old
conservative faith has proved a pretty
thankless enterprise. There is little of that faith to be seen; it has even
vanished from the pages of National Review, the leading Goldwaterite
magazine of 1964. In 1965 I was eagerly reading the back issues. I was
also studying the must-reading canon of the conservative movement in
those days: Henry Hazlitts Economics in One Lesson, John
Stormers None Dare Call It Treason, Goldwaters own
Conscience of a Conservative (actually written by L. Brent Bozell), and
the books of Bill Buckley and Ayn Rand. Today these scriptures have been
dropped into the memory hole that Buckley himself, alas, has helped dig. It
was he, after all, who brokered the alliance with the neocons.

Today conservatives
are tactfully beginning to mute their
positions on matters like abortion and sodomy. These social
issues have only emerged since 1964; they were unmentionable
subjects, not issues, when Goldwater ran for president, and
nobody foresaw that they would ever be eligible for political negotiation,
let alone within a decade. Yet Goldwater himself, in his last years, was
taking a liberal stance on them, waspishly insulting conservatives who
still differed with him. The neocons are pretty much indifferent to such
questions.

Its trite but
largely true to say that yesterdays
liberalism is todays conservatism. Conservatism now is basically
a posture of resistance, not a coherent philosophy with identifiable
central principles. Neoconservative writers now dominate National
Review itself, issuing authoritative pronouncements on who is, and who
isnt, truly conservative. David Frum recently read me out of the
movement, placing me among the extremists who are guilty of
hating their country.

Insofar as the
country is shaped by the Roosevelt
legacy Frum treasures, I must admit that my affection for it is sharply
limited. I hate what has been done to America, and I hate what has
happened to the conservative movement I once hoped would save America
from perdition. To make us love our country, wrote Edmund
Burke, our country ought to be lovely.

America today is
extremely rich and unimaginably powerful, but
one thing even its most passionate enthusiasts dont think to call it
is lovely. I remember America as lovely, even after
Roosevelt had had his way with it, but that seems like a different country.
The things I loved about it still seemed salvageable. Most Americans just
needed to be reminded what we had to conserve. Today I have my doubts. It
was always an uphill battle, but today the hill seems even steeper than in
1965.

Bill Buckley used to
quote Albert Jay Nock  another
denizen of the memory hole  wondering how one would recognize
the advent of a new Dark Age. Nock thought it had already arrived at the
time of World War II, when rival tyrannies were fighting for power and the
only certainty was that, no matter who won, civilization would lose.

Maybe the final proof
that he was right is the prevalence of a
conservatism with no memory of the past  not even
its own past. Only this Dark Age is flooded with neon light.



Cheer up! All is not lost, as long as we can still recognize the seriousness
of our plight. Which is what I strive to measure, cheerfully withal, in
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